Vegan Thanksgiving

I hope all of you who weren't out shopping on Black Friday got the chance to watch me cook my thanksgiving dinner live on Ustream.

Since St. Maarten doesn't celebrate Thanksgiving, Scott & I didn't have Thursday (or Friday) off from work. However, I was able to get my work done early on Friday so I could cook up a thanksgiving meal, albeit a little tardy. We enjoyed Thanksgiving dinner in the company of new friends: Tay (author of Caribbean Vegan) and her husband, Laurent. Tay and Laurent are so charming and adorable I just want to pinch them! They are both expats like us, though Tay is from Barbados and Laurent from France. Neither had ever experienced a traditional "American Thanksgiving" meal before, so I was thrilled to share a little of our culture with them---vegan style!

When Tay & Laurent arrived, I had a vegan "cheese"ball ready for nibbling with whole-wheat crackers.

For the first course was Sweet & Spicy Butternut Soup, a recipe from my cookbook. It's an edgy, modern take on butternut squash soup but oh-so-delicious! There are a mere three ingredients yet it's bouncing with flavor. I'd barely sat down from serving when I noticed both Scott & Laurent had scraped their bowls clean.

Next was the second course--a medley of Thanksgiving foods: "Turkey" patties (a recipe from my cookbook), mashed potatoes, whole-wheat Stuffing (a recipe from my cookbook), Cornbread (a recipe from my cookbook) and Thanksgiving Gravy (also a recipe from my cookbook). This gravy really captures the flavors I associate with Thanksgiving and it was quite popular with both Tay and Laurent... though it was the cornbread really stole the show last night! Tay said that it was the best cornbread she'd ever had! *Squee* It is really awesome cornbread.

& Yes--everything was fat-free, whole-wheat and made from healthy, everyday ingredients!

The only dish missing was cranberry sauce! (Sadly, cranberries were a little too pricey here; and I felt guilty about buying something flown in from so far away).

Then the last course! I'd made pumpkin pie but Tay brought a wonderful homemade maple-pecan vegan ice cream. She'd asked what she could bring and I thought ice cream could be a nice addition. We kept tossing ideas back and forth--plain vanilla? rum-flavored? and settled on maple-pecan with some Caribbean spicing... and my god, the marriage of my pumpkin pie and her ice cream was pure bliss!